Tracy Chapman
An Egyptian woman cleans her mirrors for sale on the street near the Nile island of al-Warraq in Egypt. Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
to the person in the bell jar...
Sylvia Plath, from ‘The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath’ / Vilhelm Hammershøi / Nicole Krauss, from ‘The History of Love’ / Ramon Casas / Joy Harjo, from ‘Speaking Tree’ / D S (saatchiart) / Fyodor Dostoevsky, from ‘The Idiot’ / Aleardo Terzi / Sylvia Plath, from ‘The Bell Jar’
Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.
Cuando tienes mucha hambre pero no te gusta la comida
mh computer tryin to say chimichangas I give uP
WHAT is that one poem (?), abt a modern worker contemplating the numerous forgotten who were actually responsible for all the ‘great’ deeds of history
found it!!
A Worker Reads History Bertolt Brecht
Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves. Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him? Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper? So many particulars. So many questions.
So I just went through three notebooks to find this, because I knew it was there.
I was at the ROM, about six years ago, at a special exhibit on Babylon. And there was a brick, formerly part of a palace. And Nebuchadnezzar, the one who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, had had his name in cuneiform stamped on every single brick, to emphasize that he had built it.
And on this one, a workman had carved his own name, Zabina’, into the block too, in Aramaic. Here’s the brick. It’s 2600 years old.
[Image ID: A tweet by @/riomatt00 reading: "no one sings gimme! gimme! gimme! (a man after midnight) louder at a party than a lesbian who does not want a man after midnight" End ID.]
